What is SAP Flexible Workflow?

SAP Flexible workflow is a general function that aims to simplify workflow configurations, it allows you to create condition-based workflows for approval processes and it’s also used for approving procurement documents, such as purchase requisitions, purchase orders, or supplier invoices. Flexible workflow expands SAP Business Workflow, enhancing its accessibility, reach, and flexibility to suit growing cloud-based innovation needs.

Flexible workflow enables business process professionals to build workflows using predefined content and tasks. This means flexible workflows stick to the same principles but can be developed with SAP Fiori apps without the need for development tools.

What are the advantages of Flexible Workflow?

Flexible workflows can be customized through the scenarios that can be created and made suitable according to the needs of your processes without needing any development. Also, key users can make changes and edit these scenarios without needing developers. These custom workflows can be defined through the Fiori app and approval action can also take place in the same environment. There are many options to determine the approvers and flexible workflow has an option to specify when the workflow step will be triggered according to the condition. One-step or multi-step approval processes can be defined depending on your requirements. Compared to classical workflows, flexible workflows have lower costs.

How are flexible workflows used for purchase requisitions?

Flexible workflow supports the development of one-step or multi-step approval processes depending on the requirements. By using the app My Inbox the approvers can approve or reject the process work items.

For the approval of a purchase requisition, there are two options; Overall release and Release of purchase requisition items. In the overall release whole purchase requisition is approved this is also called header-level approval. In the Release of purchase requisition items, the items are approved one by one individually this type of purchase requisition is also called item-level approval. The available scenarios for these options are: A scenario for regular purchase requisitions and A scenario for central purchase requisitions, provided that you use Central Procurement.

Purchase requisitions are approved automatically if there are not any defined workflows for the process. In order to take control of the approval process flexible workflows are needed. Approvers can get notified through sap Fiori launchpad or with emails about the new work items and requesters can get informed by emails whether their purchase requisition has been approved or rejected.

What steps should be followed in order to configure the flexible workflow for purchase requisitions?

• Performing the workflow customizing activities.
• Creating the approvers.
• Managing Teams as the approvers of the work items.
• Defining people who are responsible for the accounting objects.
• Defining the logic, the custom fields, and preconditions for the start and the steps of the workflow.
• Managing and defining the main activities of the workflows for purchase requisitions such as determining the workflow scenario, approvers, defining the approval steps and their orders, and activating the workflow.
• Translating the texts and the content created for the workflow.
• Configuring the email notifications that are going to be sent to approvers and requesters and maintaining the email templates.

Along with the configuration optionally transporting the workflow from quality to production can be done as well as troubleshooting the errors and the issues of the workflow and the updating of the recipients.

How are flexible workflows used for purchase orders?

Flexible workflow supports the development of one-step or multi-step approval processes and depending on the requirements in each step one or more approvers can be assigned to the processes for purchase requisitions. Approvers of the defined approval process can be assigned by a role or they can be assigned in teams as well as individuals depending on the need of the system, by using the app My Inbox the approvers can approve or reject the process work items. Purchase orders are approved automatically if there are not any defined workflows for the process. In order to take control of the approval process flexible workflows are needed. Approvers can get notified through SAP Fiori launchpad or with emails about the new work items and purchasers can get informed by emails whether their purchase order has been approved or rejected.

For more detailed information about flexible workflow, you can contact our SAP Fiori consultants by filling out the form on our "Contact" page.

SAP Fiori Consultancy

What steps should be followed in order to configure the flexible workflow for purchase orders?

• Performing the workflow customizing activities.
• Creating the approvers.
• Defining people who are responsible for the accounting objects.
• Defining the logic, the custom fields, and preconditions for the start and the steps of the workflow.
• Defining the start and approval steps preconditions and the order for the checking of the preconditions along with determining the recipients and the activation of the workflow.
• Translating the texts and the content created for the workflow.
• Configuring the email notifications that are going to be sent to approvers and requesters and maintaining the email templates.

Along with the configuration optionally transporting the workflow from quality to production can be done as well as troubleshooting the errors and the issues of the workflow and the updating of the recipients. 

How to use the app: Manage Workflows for Journal Entry Verification?

With this app for finance, you can build workflows for your business needs and activate them. In this app, you can define preconditions to start a workflow for the journal entries and currency adjustments. For verification, you can create, edit, and activate workflows and you can also define step sequence and exception handling such as when a workflow ends.

What is Maintain email templates app?

Maintain email tablet app allows you to define email templates so that you can arrange custom emails with your flexible workflow number without needing any development. Users can also get notified about the work items via email along with the Fiori launchpad notifications. You can create custom templates through this tool where you can define subject and body text and create language-specific variants. To write the content of the email dynamically you can use parameters and since the tool is fully HTML supported, through the hyperlink in the email users can view the request in their inbox directly and dynamically.

Benefits of Flexible Workflow

• Instead of creating one large, complex workflow, you can design several flexible workflow scenarios for a procurement document.
• Preconditions can be used to start a process and decide whether a workflow step is appropriate.
• You can specify the steps that the approver should take for each operation.
• Parallel approval is supported for any of the steps
• You can specify what should happen next when the approver decides to reject the work item with exception handling.
• Supports push notifications
• It provides integration with the SAP-recommended Fiori My Inbox application.